The morning brought a very dense fog. After rounding the Cape Beagle Lighthouse which marked the entrance to the Broken Group I lost sight of land for several hours and had to judge my distance from the coast by whether I could hear the waves breaking.
When the fog cleared close to midday, I was greeted by the sight of a broad waterfall plunging down a fifty-foot cliff face onto the beach. From a distance it seemed to drop directly into the sea and the whiteness of the foam contrasted with the dark forest, as though someone had notched a breakline along a green horizon. I think that this waterfall must have formed in the same way as the waterfall I saw when paddling with the Skils group. A stream that emptied in the ocean must have existed here once, and an earthquake uplifted the land, turned the stream into a lake, and now it overflows onto the beach like a spilling bathtub.
I considered landing by the falls, but the wind had picked up, and I had hopes of making all the way to Port Renfrew. Alas I regret not stopping to appreciate more of the scenery. It would have been a lovely place to camp and spend the afternoon.
South of the falls, I stumbled onto a huge colony of sea lions perched on a slanted rocky islet. From a distance they looked like piles of raw sausages on display at the meat section of a grocery store.
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“That must be what the orcas think. Hey, let’s make a trip to the supermarket and get some sea lion hotdogs. Maybe they’re having one of those yummy baby sausages.” I thought.
The sea lions were very aware of me. A raft of them on the water swimming to the rock stopped and poked their heads up to observe me. What they were thinking is hard to say. But they kept a healthy distance. “Well, it kind of looks like an orca, but I’ve never seen one that is yellow and has a weird shimmering green kelp on its back.”
They followed me staying behind my kayak and whenever I stopped, they would stop as well. I concluded that this must be their way to safeguard from the danger. If you must swim with orcas, keep them in front of you where you can see them.
Sea Kayak Vancouver Island Circumnavigation
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